The Great Escape

Chapter Twenty

THE HOUSE WAS QUIET WHEN Lucy returned from town. She unpacked the groceries and a small charcoal grill from Panda’s trunk. While the coals heated, she tossed a worn cloth over the picnic table, set it with a hodgepodge of dishes, and shucked four ears of corn.

When she was back in the kitchen, she poured herself a generous glass of wine and unwrapped some freshly caught, but mercifully cleaned and de-headed, trout she’d bought at the marina. She stuffed the trout with spinach leaves, some wild chives she’d found growing in the back, and a few lemon slices. After brushing the fish lightly with olive oil, she set the pieces on a platter waiting for the grill. She wasn’t sure she was doing the right thing, but she did know Temple couldn’t keep on like this any longer-obsessed, tormented, and destined to regain all the weight she’d lost as soon as she left this Fat Island she’d created.

Panda appeared while she was making a quick salad, this one supplemented with pine nuts, slivers of ripe pear, and a creamy crumble of forbidden feta. “Do you really think this is a good idea?” he asked.

“Got a better one?”

He watched glumly as she mixed up a light dressing from a splash of olive oil and a fruity balsamic. “Why did I ever take this job?”

“Because you owed her.” She handed him the platter of stuffed trout. “The grill’s outside. Don’t overcook it.”

He gazed at the trout, his expression vaguely dumbfounded. “Do I look like a guy who knows how to grill?”

“Just don’t poke at the pieces until they’re ready to flip. You’ll figure it out. It’s in your male genes.”

He stalked outside, muttering under his breath. She checked the water she’d set to boil the corn. Instead of sabotaging Temple’s diet, she wanted to awaken her senses to something other than deprivation.

Temple wandered into the kitchen, her hair scraggly and eyes red, looking more like the scullery maid than the Evil Queen. Lucy poured her half a glass of wine from the bottle of sauvignon blanc she’d just bought and handed it over without speaking. Temple brought it to her nose, inhaled, then took a small sip. She closed her eyes and savored.

“We’re eating outside tonight, and I want flowers on the table.” Lucy gave her a lumpy blue pottery vase that looked like a grade-school art project. “Scrounge around and find something.”

Temple was too drained to protest.

Her effort consisted of hosta leaves, Queen Anne’s lace, and a few black-eyed Susans. Predictably, the end result didn’t fit her definition of perfection, so she hated it, but Lucy couldn’t imagine an arrangement more suited to the faded red-rooster tablecloth and unmatched dishes.

The picnic table, turned for a lake view, sat under the oak. Panda took the bench across from Lucy and Temple. Lucy set an ear of corn on Temple’s plate and her own, but gave him two. “I forgot to buy butter,” she lied. “Try that instead.” She pointed to the lime wedges lying on a child’s plastic Sesame Street plate.

As she’d hoped, the explosive sweetness of the corn combined with the tang of fresh lime juice and a sprinkle of sea salt made up for the lack of butter. She wanted to feed Temple’s soul but not sabotage her body. Despite a few charred places, Panda had done a good job grilling the fish, and the interior was moist and flavorful.

“God, this is so good.” Temple uttered the words like a prayer.

“Amen.” Panda moved on to his second ear of corn, eating far more tidily than either Temple or Lucy.

Temple examined her cob for a kernel she might have missed. “How did you learn to cook like this?”

Lucy didn’t feel like bringing up the subject of White House chefs. “Trial and error.”

After Temple had chased the last remaining pine nut around her empty plate with a moistened fingertip, she studied Lucy with genuine curiosity. “What’s in this for you? We all know I’m crazy. Why do you care what happens to me?”

“Because I’ve grown weirdly fond of you.” Besides, trying to fix other people was a great distraction from trying to fix herself. With her deadline less than a month away, she hadn’t written even a page of the material her father wanted, she wouldn’t let herself think about going back to work, and she barely talked to her family. All she’d accomplished was to bake a lot of bread, perfect her honey caramels, and have a dead-end affair with a man she was using as a sexual convenience.

“Lucy’s been taking care of people all her life,” Panda said. “It’s in her DNA.” He studied her in a way that made her uncomfortable. “She saved her kid sister. She got her parents together. Hell, if it hadn’t been for Lucy, it’s doubtful her mother would have become president.” He brushed a fly away. “You could say that by the time Lucy was fifteen, she’d changed the course of American history.”

His vision of her made her uncomfortable, and she got up from the table. “How about dessert?”

“There’s dessert?” Temple sounded as if she’d just heard that the Easter Bunny was real.

“Life is meant to be lived.”

Lucy returned from the kitchen with a square of dark chocolate that she broke into three small pieces. “You gave him more,” Temple grumbled. And then, “Forget I said that.”

But as Lucy and Temple nibbled at their own chocolate, Panda’s square remained untouched. He crushed his napkin and dropped it on his plate. “I’m handing in my resignation.”

The chocolate stuck in Lucy’s throat. Temple’s breakdown… The meal Lucy had just fixed… He’d found the excuse he’d been looking for to leave the island and, in the process, get away from her.

“Like hell you will.” Temple sucked a chocolate smear from her finger.

“You hired me to stop exactly this sort of thing,” he said calmly. “Cheese, chocolate, corn on the cob… I didn’t do my job.”

“Your job’s changed.”

His calmness evaporated. “Exactly how has it changed?”

She made a vague gesture. “I’ll figure that out.”

“Forget it!” He pushed himself up from the table and stormed across the yard toward his brooding place.

As he disappeared up the rocky slope, Temple looked at Lucy. “If you want to land this guy, you’ll have to work faster. Your time’s running out.”

“Land him? I don’t want to land him.”

“Now who’s hiding from the truth?” She reached for the chocolate he’d left, thought better of it, and tossed it over the bluff. “Patrick Shade adores you, despite his grumbling. He’s one of the sexiest men on the planet. He’s also ethical, caring, and just screwed up enough to be interesting. You’re in love with the guy.”

“I am not!”

“Now who needs a shrink?”

Lucy tossed her legs over the picnic bench and grabbed her plate. “This is the thanks I get for feeding you real food.”

“Unless you want to lose the best man you’ll ever meet, you’d better pick up your game.”

“I don’t have a game. And Ted Beaudine was the best man I ever met.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Lucy stormed toward the house. “You clean up. I’m going into town. And no more exercise the rest of the night!”

THE COMPASS SAT A BLOCK off Beachcomber Boulevard, a weather-beaten one-story building with fishing nets draped across the front and pitted brass ships’ lanterns mounted on either side of the door. A sign advertised LIVE MUSIC AND HAPPY HOUR ALL DAY.

In love with Panda? Total rubbish. She knew the difference between real love and an affair.

The interior smelled of beer and buffalo wings. More fishing nets hung on the walls, along with plastic floats, fake compasses, reproduction ship’s wheels, and a collection of bras. The wooden tables were pressed close together with an open space at the rear for the band. The bar, which had a reputation as a hangout for the younger vacation crowd, was just beginning to come alive.

Lucy watched the band tune up while she sipped a watermelon margarita. Why would Temple even think such a thing? Just because Panda was hot? So were a lot of men, maybe not to the same degree-definitely not to the same degree-but love was more than sex. Love implied common interests, an ease being with each other, a shared sense of values. Okay, so she and Panda did have some of that-a lot of that-but…

She was relieved when a beefy jock type sidled up to her. “What’s your name, foxy lady?”

“I go by Viper.”

“Like windshield viper?” He was already visibly drunk, and he blew a series of hee-haws through his nose.

“No,” she replied. “Like, if-you-piss-me-off, I’ll-kick-your-ass Viper.” She blew her own silent hee-haw.

Only as the kid backed away did it occur to her that, between her dreads, tattoos, and tough talk, she might be too scary for the average male, which kind of defeated her purpose in coming here. But as she watched jock boy retreat, she had to admit she loved the idea that goody-goody Lucy Jorik could frighten anybody away.

She’d dressed in full-out goth-skank mode: a little black skirt that barely covered her butt, a one-shoulder black halter top with a grommet border, and her only pair of heels-studded black platform mules. With her tats on full display, nose and eyebrow rings in place, heavy dark eyeliner, she definitely stood out from all the college girls in their cute little shorts and flip-flops.

She drifted toward a kennel of males: a golden retriever, a greyhound, a pit bull, and a couple of mongrels. All of them were watching her. She almost asked permission to join them before she remembered who she was. “I’m Viper.” She set her beer on the table and took the only empty chair. “If you hear any stories about me, they’re probably true.”

WHERE THE HELL WAS SHE? By midnight, Panda had checked every bar in town before he remembered The Compass. Lucy had taken his car, so he’d had to come into town by boat, leaving Temple alone. For all he knew, Temple had downed the rest of the chocolate Lucy had bought. He no longer cared.

He surveyed the crowd and spotted her right away. She was dancing in front of the band with a skinny, long-haired kid who looked like a young Eddie Van Halen. If you could call that pelvic grind she was doing “dancing.” Both the lead guitarist and bass player were singing right to her, a cover of Bon Jovi’s “Runaway.” She looked tough, dangerous, and barely legal in her trashy top and trashier shoes. Her skirt wasn’t much more than a handkerchief and showed way too much leg, along with a new tat of a snake coiling up one calf, its fanged head pointed toward Nirvana. Hard to remember that two and a half months ago this tough-as-nails man-eater had been wearing pearls and preparing to settle into domestic bliss with the most respectable guy in Texas.

He was attracting his own kind of attention, but he’d long ago lost his taste for coeds. The song came to an end. She hooked her arms around the young stud’s neck, leaned into him, and kissed the son of a bitch. Long and hard.

Panda plowed through the crowd and gave the punk a nudge on the shoulder. “Get lost.”

She turned her head just far enough to lift her phony-pierced eyebrow at him, then tightened her hold on the kid’s neck and stuck her lips near his earlobe. “Ignore him. He’s not as tough as he looks.”

Panda didn’t have to stare at the kid more than a few seconds before the kid figured out that wasn’t true. The boy broke Lucy’s hold. “Later, okay?”

Lucy watched the kid hurry off, then glared at Panda. “Go away,” she shouted over the music. “I’m drunk, and I was just getting ready to make out with him.”

He gritted his teeth. “Congratulations. At this rate, you’ll be done with your list in no time.”

She stomped her metal-studded shoe. “Damn it, he’s leaving, and I was going to sleep with him. Now it’ll have to be the greyhound.”

Like hell. He didn’t know who the greyhound was, only that this she-devil wasn’t sleeping with anybody but him tonight. “Here’s the thing, babe… I don’t share my woman.”

She looked way too outraged. “I’m not your woman. And I’m not your babe!”

He kissed her before she could say any more. She tasted like booze and cinnamon lipstick. But she didn’t throw herself into the kiss the way he wanted. Instead she nipped his bottom lip with her teeth and backed off. “Nice try, Patrick, but no dice. I’m partying with new friends, and you aren’t invited.”

“Hold on. You told me you wanted to make out in public.”

“And you said you wouldn’t.”

“Changed my mind.” He was a shitty dancer, but he figured what she’d been doing wasn’t exactly dancing, so he pulled her against him.

She refused to cooperate. “Buy me a drink first.”

“You’ve had enough.”

She glued her feet to the ground. “No drink, no dance. Get me a kamikaze.”

He gritted his teeth and stalked over to the bar. “Make me something that tastes like a kamikaze,” he told a female bartender who looked like a prison guard. “But without the booze.”

“What are you?” she growled. “Some kind of religious nut?”

“Just make the damned drink.”

The final concoction tasted more like an orange Popsicle than a real kamikaze, but maybe Lucy wouldn’t notice. He spotted her perched on some guy’s lap. The kid was tall and almost comically skinny, with a long nose and longer neck. The greyhound.

He bought himself a beer and sauntered over to the table. The greyhound saw him coming and got up so fast he nearly dumped her. Panda nodded at him and handed Lucy her drink. “I see you’re up to your old tricks, babe.”

She gave him the stink eye.

“A word of advice, boys…” He sipped his beer. “Check your wallets before you let her get away. She can’t help herself.”

As they reached for their pockets, he set down his beer and pulled her back to the dance floor, where the band had launched into an off-key ballad. She smirked at him. “No need to make out with me. Like I told you, I’ve already done that. With two of them.”

“I’m impressed.” He cupped his hands around her butt and moved his mouth closer to her ear. “How about getting felt up in public? Is that on your list, too?”

“No, but…”

He squeezed. “You should put it there.”

He was hoping for a little embarrassment on her part, but he didn’t see it. He backed her to the wall next to a wooden whale and kissed the hell out of her. This time he got a reaction. She wrapped her arms around his neck, right where they belonged. She seemed a little dazed, or maybe that was him. He tugged at her earlobe with his lips. “Let’s get out of here.”

She acted as though he’d dumped a bucket of ice water over her head. “No way, dude. I’m staying.”

“Think again, dude,” he retorted. “You’re going with me.”

“And how exactly are you going to pull that off?”

She had a point. As much as he might want to, he couldn’t exactly throw her over his shoulder and drag her out without attracting the attention of at least a few good Samaritans, right along with the prison guard behind the bar, who probably had a handgun tucked away somewhere.

Lucy sauntered off, ass wiggling. She found another table, this one holding an older and tougher crowd. His temper surged. She was a big girl, and if this was the way she wanted it, to hell with her.

He began to elbow his way toward the door, then paused. Some of the women were watching her a little too closely, probably because they didn’t like the male attention she was attracting. But maybe they were trying to place her face, and if that happened… He imagined cell phones pulled out, cameras clicking away, people pressing in on her…

He ordered a club soda, leaned against the bar, and watched her until the men at the table got uneasy and stopped talking to her. She tried another table, but he had his glare on good and strong, and they didn’t roll out the welcome mat either. Instead of calling it a night, she came toward him, the ass-wiggling a thing of the past. Her footsteps were firm, her eyes steady, and beneath all that makeup, she looked like a woman who knew her way around the world’s power centers.

“Thanks to whatever it was you ordered for me, I’m sober,” she said with deadly seriousness. “I know exactly what I’m doing, and I don’t need your protection.” She lifted her chin. “I’ve spent a decade under guard. That’s more than enough. As of right now, we’ve broken up. I want you to leave.”

A blinding fury claimed him, the kind of fury he’d thought was behind him. He slammed his drink down on the bar. “You’ve got it, sister.”

LUCY HAD GOTTEN RID OF Panda, but she’d also lost her party spirit. Why did he have to show up and spoil everything? Still, she shouldn’t have flown off the handle like that. It was Temple’s fault. Her smug certainty that Lucy had fallen in love with him had made Lucy panicky.

She shouldn’t be. Temple was wrong. Lucy wasn’t the kind of woman to fall in love with one man two and a half months after she’d been in love with another. And she especially wasn’t the kind of women to fall in love with someone who was so guarded that he refused to reveal anything about himself. Still, some part of her wished she hadn’t announced they were breaking up quite yet, even though summer was nearly over and he’d be leaving soon.

She waited long enough to be sure she wouldn’t run into him outside before she left the bar. The parking lot was full. Since she’d taken his car, she half expected to see that he’d driven off in it and left her stranded, but he hadn’t. He was still taking care of her. Her eyes prickled even though she knew it was better to get their breakup over with now.

She didn’t want to go home, didn’t want to talk to anybody. She glanced toward the car but couldn’t make herself get in. If she’d had sneakers with her, she could have gone for a walk to clear her head, but her heels weren’t designed for a nighttime hike. Still, the air was warm, the moon full. She picked her way through the cars and around to the side of the bar, harshly lit with a single flood.

The building perched above an inlet. If she owned the place, she’d have put an open patio back here. Instead, she saw a pair of Dumpsters, an equipment shed, and a broken-down picnic table. Judging by the crushed cigarette packs and litter of butts on the ground, this was where the employees took their smoke breaks.

She made her way carefully over the uneven ground to the picnic bench and sat. The damp wood was cool against her bare thighs, and the air smelled of lake and cooking oil. She heard the roar of motorcycles, and for a moment, she wanted to believe one of them belonged to Panda, her own Sir Galahad rushing to rescue her from the dismal swamp of her own thoughts.

She gazed at the lights from the homes across the water. After his blowup with Temple, she wouldn’t be surprised if Panda was gone by this time tomorrow. But what about Lucy herself? How long was she going to stay? She envisioned herself standing on the bluff behind the house, autumn leaves falling around her, then snowflakes. She saw spring arriving; another summer. Years passing. Her hair turning gray, face wrinkling, the strange old lady who’d arrived one summer and never left. Eventually they’d find her mummified body buried under a mountain of petrified homemade bread.

She shivered. A loud voice intruded. “Hold on. I gotta take a piss.”

“You always gotta take a piss.”

“Fuck you.”

Footsteps crunched in the gravel. A man with an unkempt beard and a bandanna wrapped around his head appeared behind the building. As his companion stopped by the Dumpster, the bearded one spotted her. “Hey.”

They both wore boots, scruffy jeans, and scruffier hair. These guys weren’t the lawyers and high school guidance counselors who turned biker on weekends. They were the real thing, and from their unsteady walks, they were both drunk.

Lucy Jorik would have been frightened, but Viper knew how to handle situations like this. “Hey, yourself.”

“You care if I take a piss?” the bearded biker said in a voice louder than necessary. “You can watch if you want.”

The man by the Dumpster snickered. “Trust you, man, to find a chick back here.”

Viper wasn’t easily cowed, but she wasn’t stupid either. The bar was too noisy for anyone to hear her, and she was keeping this conversation short. “I’ve got better things to do.” She rose from the bench.

Dumpster man swaggered toward her. “He’ll let you hold it for him.”

As she smelled the liquor on them, her uneasiness grew, but Viper didn’t believe in showing fear. “I couldn’t find anything that little.”

They hooted with laughter. Even though her knees had started to shake, she loved how tough she was. This summer hadn’t been a waste after all.

Except her wisecrack had opened the door to a camaraderie she didn’t want, and they were both closing in on her. “I like you,” the bearded one said.

Dumpster man had a narrow, sloping forehead and a unibrow. “Come on inside and have a drink with us.”

She swallowed. “Sure. Let’s go.”

But they didn’t move, and the smell of liquor and body odor was making her queasy.

“You got an old man?” The one with the beard scratched his stomach like Panda used to, except this was the real thing.

“An old lady,” she retorted. “I don’t go for guys.”

She thought she was being smart, but the look they exchanged wasn’t encouraging, and Beard Man’s eyes were creeping all over her. “You just haven’t found the right one. Isn’t that right, Wade?”

“Yeah, like I haven’t heard that before.” She managed a sneer.

A fence blocked the far side of the bar, so she’d have to slip past both of them before she could get to the parking lot. She’d always felt safe on the island, but she didn’t feel safe now, and her Viper face was slipping. “Let’s get that drink.”

“No hurry.” Wade, the Dumpster man, rubbed his crotch. “Scottie, go pee.”

“Can’t. I got a boner.”

Their stench made her want to retch. Her heart had started to race. “I need a drink,” she said quickly. “You can come with me or stay out here.”

But as she tried to slip past them, the one named Wade grabbed her arm. “I like it out here.” He squeezed until it hurt. “You really a dyke?”

“Leave me alone.” Her voice was suddenly high-pitched, all the toughness gone.

A man interrupted. A knight in shining armor calling out from the corner of the building. “Everything okay back here?”

“No!” she exclaimed.

“Girlfriend’s drunk,” Wade shouted back. “Don’t pay her no attention.” He palmed the back of her head and smashed her face into the reek of his T-shirt so she couldn’t cry out.

Her knight in shining armor turned out not to be a knight at all, but one more person who didn’t want to get involved. “Okay, then.” She heard his steps fade away.

She had no Panda to protect her, no Secret Service. Be careful what you wish for. The pressure on the back of her head against his chest didn’t ease. She couldn’t scream. Could barely breathe. She was on her own.

She started to struggle. Pushed hard against him, twisted, got nowhere. She tried to gasp for air but came up short. The more she struggled, the tighter he held her. She fought harder. Lashed out with her shoe. The hard toe connected.

“Bitch! Grab her legs.”

Her head was suddenly free, but as she started to scream, a hand clamped over her mouth from behind, wrenching her neck. One of them caught her legs. Her shoes dropped off as her feet left the ground. She was screaming in her head, a silent scream that did her no good at all.

“Where do you want to take her?”

“Behind those trees.”

“I go first.”

“Bullshit. I saw her first.”

They were going to rape her. They dragged her, one of them holding her legs, the other seizing her by the neck, cutting off her air. She clawed at his arm, digging in her fingernails, but the bruising pressure on her windpipe didn’t ease. They pulled her deeper into the cover of the trees. The hold on her ankle loosened. Her foot scraped the ground, and something sharp cut her heel. She felt a hand on her thigh. Heard grunts and curses. She summoned a thread of air, enough for a mewing cry. Kicked out.

“Fuck! Hold her.”

“Bitch.”

“Keep her quiet.”

“Shut up, bitch.”

Hands pressing, fingers clawing, and her consciousness beginning to slip away…

The world exploded. “Let her go!”

The bikers dropped her to the ground and spun to confront this new threat.

Barely conscious, she sucked in air and pain. Through her mental fog she saw Panda. He hurled one of them into the dirt. The other charged him. Panda threw a punch that made him stagger, but the guy was a goon, and he came right back. Panda landed a vicious jab to his middle that knocked him into a tree.

This was no gentlemen’s fight. Panda was an assassin, and he knew exactly what he was doing. The man on the ground tried to get up. Panda slammed a foot down on his elbow joint. The biker howled in agony.

The other one was still on his feet, and Panda had his back turned. She tried to get up, call out to warn him, but Panda was already spinning, his leg shooting out like a piston, catching the biker in the groin, crumpling him. Panda leaned down, caught him by the neck, and banged his head against the tree.

The one with the broken elbow came up on his knees. Panda grasped him by his bad arm, dragged him to the long slope that led down to the water, and rolled him over. She heard a distant splash.

Panda’s breath was coming harder now. He went back for the other one and started hauling him toward the water. She finally found her voice, a scratchy thready affair. “They’ll drown.”

“Their problem.” He hoisted the second one over the edge. Another heavy splash.

He came toward her, his chest heaving, trickling blood from the corner of his mouth. He knelt beside her, and the hands that had been so brutal moved gently along her body from her neck to her limbs to the gouge on her heel. “You’re going to hurt,” he said softly, “but I don’t think anything is broken. I’m carrying you to the car.”

“I can walk.” She hated how weak she sounded.

He didn’t argue. He simply picked her up and cradled her against his chest. The images wouldn’t fit together-the lover she knew and the brutally efficient assassin who’d crushed two men.

He must have had a spare car key because he didn’t ask for the one she’d tucked in her pocket. A couple came out of the bar and stared at them. He opened the passenger door and carefully lowered her into the seat. He took his time fastening her seat belt, still protecting her.

He asked no questions as they drove home, didn’t tell her what an idiot she was to come here alone or reproach her for being so rotten to him. She didn’t know why he’d returned to the bar, couldn’t think about what would have happened if he hadn’t. She huddled against the door, nauseated, shaken, still terrified.

“I had a half brother,” he said into the quiet gloom. “His name was Curtis.”

Startled, she turned her head to look at him.

“He was seven years younger than me.” His hands shifted on the wheel. “A dreamy, gentle kid with a big imagination.” He spoke softly as they sped along the dark road. “Our mother was either drugged out or on the prowl, so I ended up taking care of him.”

This was her story, except it was coming from him. She rested the back of her head against the door and listened, her heart rate beginning to slow.

“Eventually we ended up in foster homes. I did everything I could to keep us together, but things happened, and as I got older, I started getting into trouble. Picking fights, shoplifting. When I was seventeen, I was caught trying to sell half a gram of marijuana. It was like I wanted to get thrown into jail.”

She understood and said softly, “A good way to escape the responsibility.”

He glanced over at her. “You had the same kind of responsibility.”

“A pair of guardian angels showed up in my life. You didn’t have that, did you?”

“No. No guardian angels.” They passed Dogs ’N’ Malts, closed up for the night. She was no longer shaking quite so badly, and she unclasped her hands. He flipped on his high beams. “Curtis was murdered while I was in juvie,” he said.

She’d suspected this was coming, but it didn’t make it easier to hear.

Panda went on. “It was a drive-by shooting. Without me around to protect him, he started ignoring curfews. They let me out to go to his funeral. He was ten years old.”

If it hadn’t been for Nealy and Mat, this might have been her story and Tracy’s story. She licked her dry lips. “And you’re still trying to live with what happened. Even though you were only a kid at the time, you still blame yourself. I understand that.”

“I figured you would.” They were alone on the dark road.

“I’m glad you told me,” she said.

“You haven’t heard all of it.”

For months she’d tried to get him to spill his secrets, but she was no longer sure she wanted to hear them.

He slowed for the road’s sharpest curve. “When Curtis’s sperm donor found out my mother was pregnant, he gave her five hundred dollars and split. She loved the jerk and wouldn’t go to a lawyer. Curtis was nearly two before she realized her big love wasn’t coming back. That was when she started using.”

Lucy did the math. Panda had been nine when he’d become his brother’s caretaker. A protector, even then.

“When I got older,” he said, “I found out who the bastard was and tried to call him a couple of times, tell him how bad things were for his kid. He acted like he didn’t know who I was talking about. Told me he’d have me locked up if I kept harassing him. Eventually I found out where he lived and went to see him.” He shook his head. “It’s not easy for a city kid to get to Grosse Pointe on public transportation.”

Grosse Pointe? Lucy sat up straighter, an odd feeling coming over her.

“It was a big house, looked like a mansion to me. Gray stone with four chimneys, a swimming pool, and these kids chasing each other around the front yard with water guns. Three boys in their teens. A girl. Even in shorts and T-shirts they all looked rich.”

The pieces fell into place.

“The Remingtons,” he said. “The perfect American family.”

The car’s headlights cut through the night.

“I’d walked the last couple of miles from the bus stop,” he said, “and I hid across the street. They all had that lean, WASPy look. Curtis and I were both dark like our mother.” The shuttered farm stand whipped by on their left. “While I watched, a landscape crew pulled up at the house and wheeled a mower off the back of the truck. Four kids in the family, and they hired somebody to cut their grass.”

He turned into the drive. The house loomed, not even a light over the front door to welcome them. “I found another hiding place where I could watch them in their backyard. I stayed until it got dark.” He killed the engine but made no move to get out of the car. “I felt like I was watching a TV show. It was his wife’s birthday. There were balloons and presents, this big glass-top table set with flowers and candles. Steaks on the grill. I was so damned hungry, and none of them looked like they had a care in the world. He had his arm around his wife most of the evening. He gave her some kind of necklace as a present. I couldn’t see what it looked like, but from the way she acted, I figured it cost a lot more than five hundred dollars.”

Her heart welled with pity for him. And something more. Something she wouldn’t consider.

“The sickest part is that I kept going back. Maybe a dozen times over the years. It was easier after I got a car. Sometimes I’d see them, sometimes not.” He curled his fingers over the top of the steering wheel. “One Sunday I followed them to church and sat in the back where I could watch them.”

“You hated them, and you wanted to be part of them,” she said. “That’s why you bought this house.”

His hand came off the steering wheel, and his mouth twisted. “A stupid decision. It was a bad time for me. I shouldn’t have done it.”

Now she understood why he refused to change anything in the house. Consciously or unconsciously, he wanted to live inside the museum of their lives.

He got out of the car and came around to help her. Even though she was feeling steadier, she was grateful for his hand as he led her through the front door and into the bedroom.

He understood without her telling him how much she needed to wash away the men’s filth. He helped her undress. Turned on the water.

When she was in the shower, he pulled off his clothes and got in with her. But there was nothing sexual in the tender way he washed her, dried her, tended to the cuts on her feet. Not once did he remind her of what she’d said to him at the bar or criticize her for wandering off the way she had.

After he’d helped her into bed, he touched her cheek. “I need to talk to the police. The house is locked, and Temple’s upstairs. Your cell is by your bed. I won’t be gone long.”

She wanted to tell him she could take care of herself, but that was so blatantly untrue that she said nothing. Viper, despite all her tough girl posturing, had proved to be completely helpless.

Later she awoke to the sound of his footsteps on the stairs. She looked at the clock. It was four-thirty. He’d been gone almost two hours. She flinched as she tried to find a more comfortable position, but her ribs were tender, her neck stiff, her back sore. None of that hurt as much as thinking about what Panda had endured as a child.

She eventually gave up trying to fall back to sleep and got out of bed. He’d done a good job bandaging her foot, and putting her weight on it barely hurt. She made her way to the sunroom, where she curled up on the couch.

As the light leaked over the horizon, she turned her thoughts from Panda to her own foolishness-the last thing she wanted to examine. But last night’s ugly experience had ripped away the veil of her self-deception and shown her the absurdity of the false identity she’d created for herself. What a joke-that hard-boiled swagger and pugnacious attitude. She’d never felt more like a fool-the biggest phony on the island. When it had come to protecting herself, she’d failed abysmally. Instead she’d been a helpless, frantic mess who had to be rescued by a man. The truth tasted bitter in her mouth.

She found her yellow pad. After a few false starts, she wrote a brief note. She owed him that-and so much more. She tossed a few things into her backpack and, as the sun came up, made her way through the woods.

Her sneakers were soaked with dew by the time she reached the cottage just as Bree was emerging from the honey house. Bree’s hair was uncombed, her clothes rumpled, her sticky hands held far away from her body. But her gasp of alarm indicated that Lucy looked a lot worse.

Lucy slipped her backpack off her shoulder. “Could I stay here for a while?”

“Of course you can.” She paused. “Come inside. I’ll make coffee.”

LATER THAT MORNING, WHILE BREE was at the farm stand, Lucy went into the bathroom and cut the dreads from her hair. Standing naked on the white tile floor, she worked at her tattoos with a combination of rubbing alcohol and baby oil. Finally the last remnants were gone.